Douglas Murray gives new meaning to the word precocious. He wrote his first book in his gap-year betwen A-Levels and Oxford University. It was a commendable biography of the British noble Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas and was received rapturously by a variety of authors, including Christopher Hitchens. Since then he has published a torrent of articles on the post-9/11 world order castigating Islamic terrorism and defending the ‘war on terror’ as a war for civilisation. His most recent book is ‘Neoconservatism; Why we need it’, a revisionist tract which tries to lift his ideology of choice from the morass of misinformation and misrepresentation he believes it currently resides in.
I arrange to meet Douglas at his grand place of residence in central London.

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MK: Firstly, I was going to ask how you would define neoconservatism as an ideology or school of thought?

DG: Yeah, it’s a school of thought. It’s a way of looking at the world, that’s the thing. It’s not a school in so far as in actual fact a lot of people have picked it up who don’t have any neocon allegiance. You know, they didn’t go to the University of Chicago or… It’s a way of looking looking at the word – the best description of course is by Irving Kristol who said that “a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality”.

I say there are another couple of ways of saying that. I mean I often say that we’re liberals – in a classical sense of the term, not in corrupted modern sense – classical liberals who look at the world with liberal eyes but have a kind of pair of realist spectacles i.e. we’re two things at once. It’s a conjoining of two schools of thought. We’re realists – you know, we’re not just idealists trying to sort of rush around the globe trying to make a postmodern future or anything. We don’t have anyone pulling the wool over our eyes. But we believe you’ve got to treat the world as it is but make it into something which it ought to be. I mean you should act in the world – it’s your job. Particularly the job of free nations – particularly rich and powerful free nations, it’s your job to help other people, it’s your duty.

MK: Does it have a domestic agenda as well as having a foreign policy agenda?

DG: Yes. The domestic agenda has much more to be debated over. In my book I explain what a British neoconservative outlook is. In America it has been much clearer. But nowadays neoconservativism, as you know, is pretty much… I mean from Kirkpatrick and people – it was them that were saying by the late 70’s “I was just a foreign policy person, you know, domestic policy didn’t seem important or interesting to them”. So it has become foreign policy dominated but domestically there are lots of things which a neoconservative would believe.

MK: Is that a belief in a strong state than a traditional conservative?

DG: Slightly stronger state than a traditional conservative. Understanding that, you know, there are certain problems a state has to be involved in. I mean the NHS in Britain would be such a thing. I think neocons, we have made our peace with the NHS and such things – we understand there is a need for it. We don’t believe it should be the wasteful thing it is – same with benefits.

MK: It’s interesting that a lot of the neocons thinkers these days came from far-left, socialist backgrounds. Why do you think that is? Is it because there was a crossover?

DG: The first generation all did. Norman Poderitz and Irving Kristol. Kristol was the only one who was a Trotskyite. I know everyone claims that the neocons were all Trotskyites but it’s not true. Irving was. To that extent some of the neocons that have sort of started to crop up in this country, quite a lot of them are people who have come from the left and have just done the classic thing which the first generation in America did. But it’s not true now because there is another generation of course – literally another generation, family-wise, in the case of William Kristol and John Poedheretz – you can’t in some ways call them neocons because they were never left-wing and I’d include myself in that. If I ever did have a left-wing phase it was probably a matter of hours and so I can’t claim that migration either. But the point is that it’s an instinct thing – it’s a gut instinct about the world and I think there are very obvious reasons why that’s come along…

MK: Do you think there’s a contradition between the altruistic rhetoric of the neocons and their actual performance. I mean you were talking about Kirkpatrick, so take the Reagan administration which was a very realpolitik-type administration but they still talked the ideals of democracy. Take Nicaragua for example. Is there a contradiction between what they say and what they do?

DG: Well, first of all, Reagan wouldn’t be a neocon.

MK: Kirkpatrick was?

DG: Kirkpatrick certainly was. Kirkpatrick’s seminal essay on this I think was in 1979 Commentry. It’s the classic explanation of it. But one of the problems that we have as neocons is that one’s blamed for the way administrations work. So one’s blamed for the administration but the administration’s isn’t neocon. So the Washington administration now certainly isn’t neocon particularly.

MK: The Bush administration now isn’t?

DG: I mean it is in a lot of ways but it’s not… I mean I wouldn’t call, for instance, Donald Rumsfeld a neocon. I think he’s somebody who one has substantial areas of agreement and on the most important areas – that’s why it is important. But that doesn’t mean that everything they do will be a neocon thing. I mean who are the neocons in the present administration in Washington? You’re hard pushed to name any…

MK: Wolfowitz before the World Bank.

DG: Yes, and Scooter Libby of course is not active at the moment. So in a way we are always on tricky terrain with it. But I don’t mind saying that, yes, the Reagan administration, for instance, did some things extremely right and some things that didn’t go right. But I mean that is similar to any administration. The instinct is the thing and the intent…. I mean Reagan, thank God, had exactly the right instinct on the Soviet Union. Things like Nicaragua, you know, one has more problems with, to say the least. But that doesn’t, you know, demote the whole thing. At the moment, for instance, the American administration – incidentally I often refer to “we”, I am simply saying that I agree with the Bush administrations foreign policy – I don’t speak for them. But if you look at what’s happening at the moment, broadly we are getting it right, but there are going to be things we are going to get wrong. There may well be Nicaragua-like mistakes – I don’t think there are at the moment – but there might be, history will judge it. But the broad drift is in the right direction.

MK: Do you think Iraq has shown that the neocon idealism of being able to export democracy to another country, that as a tactic it cannot work?

DG: No, I don’t think that at all. I was a great supporter or advocate of the Iraq war. I still am very proud of what we did and what we are doing there. I think exactly the opposite – that what Iraq is demonstrating at the moment is that democracy does work in these regions. The set-back that we’ve had in recent days with the election of Hamas, which would be a more…. To get back quickly to Iraqi democracy – the signs for it and the signs that are it is working seem to vastly outweigh the negatives. The way that the press responds to it is just characteristic of the problems of the press. If you are a low-level insurgent you let off a bomb, you know that the BBC and the rest of the Western press are going to rush to the scene of a burning car because it makes a good story. What doesn’t make a good story is that 80% of the populace is turning out to vote. They literally didn’t bother about Iraqi democracy until January last year. It wasn’t until about January 30th 2005 that most of the press even realised this was happening because they haven’t bothered. They spent all their time dug down in the hotels hoping for more splashy stories.

MK: What do you think about some sections of the left, people like Noam Chomsky, who believe that the US and Britain even wanted elections and they were compelled to do it because of the popular resistance movements in Iraq were so strong…

DG: It’s just not true. The documents for the post-war planning were all clear – interim administration, then elections. Once again, I mean Chomsky is going on the usual thing of no evidence and an attempt to expand from some linguistic trick which always turns out to be a lie… I wouldn’t trust the man as far as I coud throw him… But there is no evidence for that: the American and British administrations always intended that the elections would go ahead. Perhaps now, one could look back and say that the interim period the Bremer administration, should have been shorter – a lot of people see that’s the case.

MK: But the think that as an example is has shown you can do it. Would you advocate doing it somewhere else?

DG: Absolutely, absolutely. First of all, I’m not one who throws around the racist card very much because I think racism now is something that has been so absurdly over used, particularly by the left, that they ought to be careful because it’s become such a common insult it’s almost losing its value – it’s a shame – like fascist.

MK: And neocon!

DG: And neocon indeed! Sometimes all three I get in one sentence…. But the thing is that it is profoundly racist to presume that such a vast swathe of human kind not only doesn’t want democracy, but is incapable of it, I mean that seems to – and I wouldn’t use the word very often – that seems to me one of the basic racist assumptions one can make. Now you can say there are societal reasons why it may work better in some areas than others – I think Iraq, like Iran incidentally, is a very good example of where democracy can work and where it should work. Palestinian region? I don’t think so, I mean that’s different.

MK: So you’re saying you have to be careful where you plant democracy, then?

DG: You should plant it everywhere, but you have to be more careful in some areas than others. Iraq and Iran are two examples of extremely cultured, civilized societies that have been brutalized by successive regimes…

MK: Some of which supported by people like Rumsfeld…

DG: Well, no. We never supported…

MK: Saddam.

DG: No, no, no. We didn’t support Saddam. He was the less bad, we thought, of two options at a time when I think he was, and I don’t think anyone would look back now and say that you should of supported Khomeinism.

MK: Yeah, but they did continue the support even after the end of the Iraq war, even after Halabja.

DG: Yeah, I know and there are many people on the left and on the right who are critical of that. I think the way in which the Conservative administration of the 1980s treated arms sales to Iraq was absolutely wrong. But in the case of these regimes – yeah, Rumsfeld made a mistake to arm Saddam during the 1980s but there were different priorities then. It is different for young people now to see what that threat was in those days.

MK: Do you think that neoconservatism wouldn’t have been able to happen in the context of the Cold War because there was to much of an onus to do bad things to combat the Soviet Union.

DG: Could have been. I mean it did happen during the Cold War…

MK: That was another question: Is neoconservatism that new, then?

DG: No, it’s not. As I explain in my book it goes back pretty much 50 years. And the Cold War years were, you know, very good years for neoconservatism. We were borne out almost entirely I think. The neocon on the threat that the Soviet Union posed was exactly accurate, was just like we’re accused now of overplaying Islamic extremism, for instance, in those days, neocons were accused of overplaying the threat of the Soviet Union. Well thank God that we didn’t listen to people who were the apologists for the Soviet Union and, of course, in the case lovely characters like the Guardian’s employee Richard Gott who was actually in the pay of the Soviet Union. So thank God we listened to the right people and thank God Reagan was the man there who would listen. In actual fact, at the end of the Cold War, there was certainly a time when some neocons were just lost, didn’t know what the do once the Cold War wasn’t there – what is there to do now for neocons, our enemy is dead?

MK: You were talking about the left and how they use these terms so much. How far do you think the term ‘neocon’ has become a pejorative term?

DG: It’s entirely pejorative.

MK: I was interested by the fact you used it so baldly in the title of you book, a lot of people would shy away from it because it has become this term of abuse…

DG: It’s about as popular as going to a party and saying, “I molest children”. I mean you go down about as well at a party. I call myself a ‘neocon’ and don’t mind other people calling me a ‘neocon’ for the same reason that Irving Kristol said that he didn’t mind because in the end if you get called something enough you should just run with it and not get hung up on definitions. And on this one, fine, there is quite a lot to answer for at the moment and I believe I do and do fairly consistently. But our enemies, neocons enemies and opponents, have a lot to answer for as well. To me it seems characteristic of a dishonest debate, that somebody think you can simply throw a term that you intend to be insulting at someone and that should shut them up.

MK: I’ve heard people say that it has anti-Semitic connotations?

DG: Very. I very often get asked by people, you know, “Are you a Jew?” Oh yeah, and you get accused of being in the pay of Zionists and all this sort of thing. I always say, “I’m not in the pay of Zionists, they get me for free – my service is on the house!”

MK: About Israel, what is the neocon perspective? I’ve read Hitchens talking about a speech Wolfowitz made in Israel which said that they need to make concessions to the Palestinians…

DG: Yes, Wolfowitz made a famous speech at the mall in Washington at a pro-Israeli rally in which Wolfowitz said, basically, the basic fact: The Palestinian people are suffering. I’m a fervent opponent of everyone the Palestinian people get to represent them, but you can’t deny they are suffering because of these bastards they keep electing and getting to represent them, that we keep on shoving money to – or we, the EU.

Wolfowitz, when he said that, was booed by the crowd in Washington but that is the partisan nature, sadly, of that conflict: The extremes of both sides in Israel-Palestine negate the possibility of suffering on the other side by ignoring it. Wolfowitz and all those of us who agree with him believe that you can’t… It’s not anti-the Palestinian people to say that the Palestinian people have corrupt and despotic leadership and now an even worse leadership. Just when we thought it wasn’t possible to have a worse leader than Yasser Arafat, they go and prove us wrong.

But, broadly, the neocon approach to Israel is entirely supportive because we understand that Israel is on the front-line, always has been. The Jewish people are on the front-line as they always have been, in my opinion. The world didn’t become simpler after 9/11. but there was some clarity it gave. And a lot of people saw, as Oliana Felachia said after 9/11, when she saw some of the remaining fascist elements in Italy aligning themselves with the anti-war brigade and all the stuff we all saw. And she wrote a great article: “I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.” Fine, if this is going to be a civilizational conflict I know which side I stand on.

MK: I was reading an article of yours in which you write: “There is no comprimise with them, nothing with which you can placate them, no territory which you can concede to them.” In terms of winning this war, you don’t think there’s any other way to do it apart from at the barrel of a gun?

DG: No, you kill them. You’ve just got to get rid of them.

MK: Cull them.

DG: Yeah. I mean we do sit down and have sat down with people frequently in the past with people who have done appalling things: the negotiations with Sinn Fein/ IRA throughout the 1980s and 90s.

MK: But look at what happened in Ireland, this is a case in point. As soon as Britain looked at the grievances of people like the IRA, the terrorism abated somewhat.

DG: Well I don’t agree with that.

MK: You don’t?

DG: No I don’t think that was what happened in Ireland.

MK: What was the reason for the decline in terrorism?

DG: Well, hang on, the decline in terrorism in Northern Ireland.

MK: Well against England.

DG: On the mainland yes, because the Major government decided that after the Docklands bomb that they couldn’t afford this to happen on a regular basis. I think they were wrong in that.

MK: So what did they do?

DG: There were three very good opportunities over a twenty year period in which the IRA could have been taken out entirely. As late as 1989 there was a great opportunity to do that. I think that the situation we have now in Northern Ireland is very unsatisfactory, always as unsatisfactory as it could be. When you have a terrorist like Martin McGuinness put up as Education Spokesman, and this sort of thing – I don’t think this is a satisfactory peace.

As always on these occasions: Peace, yes. But not on the enemies terms – not on the terms of the guy who is letting off the bombs, not on the terms of the guy who is pulling the trigger. And democracies have a duty to not be blackmailed by thugs and the lowest kind that are around which is what happens in these situations, this happened in Northern Ireland: somebody threatens to kill enough of your people and you give them what you want – I don’t think that’s the way to do it. But with Al-Qaeda it’s so much worse because you know what these guys say, what their intentions are, there’s no way we can give them that, there’s just not an inch we can them.

MK: But there is an argument which says that going into Iraq made the situation a whole lot worse: For bringing democracy to the Iraqi people we’ve sacrificed our own security.

DG: I don’t agree with that at all.

MK: But if you read a lot of what… even the 7/7 bombers said in their message, “I saw pictures on the TV of Muslims killed in Iraq and that inspired me.” And of course you cannot cede to all their demands but there is a way you can throw fuel on the fire.

DG: How do you throw fuel on the fire of people who want a fire and have already got one going? Look, the way in which these terrorists – and the 7/7 bombers in another example – they always see their so-called ‘Muslim brothers’ who they very rarely stand up for, incidentally, on peaceful terms, they never support peacefully. They don’t send out sizeable sums of money to these people in these case, they don’t do good works or anything. When they want to be violent, they are violent and they always find a reason for being violent. The excuse of Iraq, it used to be the excuse of Afghanistan, remember, it used to be the excuse of Saudi Arabia, the offence of having US troops on Saudi soil, being put there in order to protect Muslim holy sites from rampaging, border-crossing dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We can do nothing right. At the very least we should have enough pride and confidence in ourselves to know that we do only what is needed to protect our own people and keep our own people safe and to extend the freedoms we enjoy to other places.

Now I believe that is happening in Iraq. I think if some two-bit lunatic from Luton or Bradford wants to find an excuse to go and kill themselves, which I’d love it if they did more, but I’d love it if they did it on their own, but if they decide to kill other people, they will find a reason. I don’t believe these are feeling people who see the television images of suffering Palestinians or suffering Iraqis and weigh it up and then decide to go and blow up men, women and children on a London bus. Not an inch to give them on this one. And the presumption that somebody, for instance, who is teaching in a children’s primary school up North, that he is so upset simply by the images of Iraq or by our actions in X country, I just don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it.

MK: But there’s so much anti-Americanism around now. If I listen to what you say in this picture the US and Britain are bringing democracy to these people. Why is there such a different perception of what we are doing amongst people in the Arab and Muslim world to what you actually think our goals are?

DG: Well, quite a lot of reasons. The biggest one, which is very obvious, is the loss of the left. I mean the left was left entirely Godless, of course, but also soulless, hero-less, after 1989, 1990. That loss coincides with lots of things. The left which I regard as being…. Incidentally, there is an difference on this, is that I believe that the left often means well but gets it wrong. I have the presumption they mean well. A lot of them don’t and are goons and sub-fascists and so on. But broadly I believe that left-wing people in this country sort of mean well – they are left-wing out of an attitude, or just a presumption – it’s nice to be left-wing, it’s nice to be pacifist – of course it is.

But I mean the other way around – they entirely assume bad intentions of us. I was speaking with a friend, Roger Scruton, about this recently. Both of us experience exactly the same thing about – speak to left-wing people, very often do, very often enjoy it. And when I think that someone on the left is misguided I hope we can discuss it. The other way around it just doesn’t happen: they believe we are fascists, racists. You know, can’t wait to herd people into the gas chambers and that kind of thing.

But the left is in a problem. It’s not my problem, it’s the left’s problem. But where do they go? I mean, the retreat of the left over recent has been remarkable. They used to call themselves, even until 10, 15 years ago, they could still call themselves ‘Stalinists’. Since the crimes of Stalin have become so clear – I mean if you don’t know them you have just not got your eyes open – the crimes of Stalin meant that you could not any longer be a Stalinist. And you know, one by one all of their heroes, all of the things they have used to identify themselves have been show up to be genocidal in every case. And now with Mao, just in the last year Jung Change and Halliday… Even one year ago, before that book came out, you would still hear left-wingers in London describe themselves as Maoist. It’s starting to retreat again.

MK: Someone said to me, “Would you rather be a peasant in Mao’s China or a person who can’t get health-care in America?” We’ve got George Galloway, who’s a Stalinist himself!

DG: Yes, he can always remind you of the good old days… But there is a profound loss on the left. And that just can’t be overestimated. The other thing it comes from is the post-history stuff, the kind of Fukuyama-type stuff. I do believe that after the fall of Communism, with us losing our most identifiable enemy, there was a period of curious reflection – it look curious now. But a lot of people believed – and there is some truth to it and I do partly partake in this theory – some people believed that we had got into this so-called ‘post-historical state’. I believe that is true. I believe that representative democracy is the end point of human achievement as a society, there is no next step from that. This imperfect, wonderful thing is what we have now.

MK: Well the next step some people say is the move towards a Swedish model – a sort of ‘social democracy’.

DG: Yes, which I don’t believe in because I think it becomes illiberal and I think it restricts freedom. So I regard American democracy as being the ideal model – very low tax, keep the state out of peoples lives but understand that the state has to do something. But there is a sort of philosophical explanation for why the left and a lot of other people have got it so wrong with America and what we’re arguing for from the neocon side at the moment. And that is that take the Hegel and Fukuyama thing of ‘the last man’. If we are indeed the last man in the non-apocalyptic sense, then there is an argument that – and I think this is what you saw in 2002/2003 in the run up to Iraq, it’s certainly what I saw there – which was pampered, Western, privileged people thinking they were doing something right and supporting tyranny.

And the reason they can get there is because of the thing that we all thought could happen with the ‘last man’ which has been demonstrated in recent years – which is that the last man finds it so irritating that there’s nothing which against to rebel, so irritating that there’s nothing against which to rebel, so irritating with which there is nothing against which to fight, that he fights against good and he rebels against freedom. And I think that’s what we’ve seen, and I think that’s what we’re seeing on the streets now and I think with the Muslim riots and the number of people – including the British Foreign Secretary, shamefully – who are willing to implicitly sort of condone it. It’s a rebellion against freedom and I think we have to be really careful. George Galloway and people like that are the epitome of this because their appeal is for people who can say, “I’m not really very happy with my lot and I’m going to blame this.” Do you know this is the best you can get? And you can argue for it, and we can debate it, and you can stand for election, and you can change things.

But the notion that there is a better way by supporting tyrannies or by instituting tyrannies or by having tyrannies at home, or having supporters of tyrannies at home and telling people how “lucky” they are to be living under a dictator. This is something to be really aware of and this is something that – this is the first I’ve mentioned him – but Strauss was exactly right on. Strauss is not a neocon handbook but he was good on that thing that you have to remain constantly alert to the few innate flaws in liberal democracy and we have to. And I believe the anti-war movements and the anti-American movements are a really clear example of the worst thing that can happen with this – as an attitude rebelling against freedom.

MK: If you’re correct then obviously it’s terrible that people rebel against it. But people on the left, their argument would be: “It’s a nice in theory, but, then, look at the terrible regimes that Bush is still supporting or the West is still supporting.” Look at Uzbekistan – it’s not an example of a liberal democracy gaining human rights for it’s people…

DG: Yes, but it’s not Saudi Arabia either….

MK: But Saudi Arabia is also supported. That book ‘Bush and the House of Saud’…

DG: Well, the Bush administration is by no means supportive institutionally of the Saudi government.

MK: But you don’t here much denunciation of it, do you?

DG: Well, you do. I mean, Carol Hughes on her recent tours of the Middle East was fairly vociferous in her criticisms of the Saudi representation and the parliament, and a number of people have been. I mean, the administration have been, broadly. Condoleeza Rice has been pushing for greater representation in Saudi.

The problem I have with the people with people who say: “Why aren’t you doing it here, or, why are you supporting this?” is that I have never seen a case of that happening where they are serious about it. I mean if somebody says, for instance, “Why are you going into Iraq, look at what’s happening in Uzbekistan,” then you say, “OK, great. Are you advocating that we sort out Uzbekistan?” No, they never are. It’s a delaying tactic. It’s a way of trying constantly to disable the power in the world from doing what the powerful have a duty to do: which is to stand up for the week. It’s the same with Israel-Palestine: it’s the same as, you know, don’t go into Iraq, don’t go into Afghanistan before you have sorted out the Israel-Palestine conflict. Are you serious? It’s like wait until the seas run dry. Of course, keep working at the Israel-Palestine peace solution although I don’t see how you can at the moment with Hamas on the opposite side. But are these people serious? I don’t think they are. I think they just want to try to clamp American and British power.

MK: I think it’s because they come from the premise that power always, by it’s nature, tries to dominate rather than having altruistic motives…

DG: And there’s no evidence that America has ever done this… I mean it doesn’t exercise power that way.

MK: But what your saying is that we should believe that America would have done what it did in Iraq if it’s because expert was oranges…

DG: Oh yeah, I believe it would.

MK: You believe they would have done it?

DG: Absolutely, absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. Afghanistan? What did we get out of Afghanistan?

MK: Well according to Richard Clarke they wanted to go to Iraq first.

DG: There were certainly people mentioning early on. But the point is that Afghanistan, Iraq, what are we really getting out of this, if it’s a money thing, an oil thing. What are we getting out of it? We’re spending how many billions of pounds if the US Senate passing? The sums don’t even add, they just don’t add up. If we had done this in order to rip off oil or whatever they are accusing of now – perhaps taking vases from the museum in Baghdad. If they think this is what we did it for, then they just don’t have a calculator to hand because Britain and America and our allies are now not only in it for the long-term and we have to be in it for the long-term, but we are financially committed. All the guys from Washington were in London last week for the conference on Afghanistan and it’s a nightmare trying to sort out the Afghan economy, but anyone who thinks that there’s another motive behind this just hasn’t got it. Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded for the same reason:

They were two regimes that were most prominently up there, who, after 9.11, we realised you couldn’t live with, just no reason to. One regime, apart from the Taliban, celebrated 9/11: Saddam Hussein’s. One regime was a place where terrorists across the globe could go to: Saddam. And that happened not just with Al-Qaeda people, and not just with the elements that people seem to think aren’t necessarily al-Qaeda (but we all know that al-Qaeda isn’t like a card-carrying organisation). But we’re serious about 9/11 and with the terrorists who are going between two, three, four often: born in one country, migrating to others, then carrying out terrorist atrocities in another one. We’re serious enough after 9/11, we were willing to allow the regime which was giving sanctuary to Abu-Abas, Nikay Alawro, to Abu-Nidal, to Misi-Asin, who had mixed the chemicals in the World Trade Center bombing and had jumped bail in 1993 from New York and come straight to Baghdad, straight to Baghdad. That is what they all did. That’s why Mr. Zaqawi and his goons come out of Afghanistan: nowhere else to go now, we go to Iraq. And that means that you have to go for that place next. If there were a place now – if there were a single country – and I think there are worrying signs that Iran or Syria will maybe have to be dealt with in a similar way.

MK: Not militarily?

DG: Not with an invasion, but over time, if they don’t change their ways. If you have one country in the world that is sponsoring terror and is exporting terror and is providing a sanctuary and a training place and a home to terror, you have got to take it out. No second chances on that – we just don’t have that luxury anymore, particularly with the risks of WMD’s. We have the right, America has the right, every country has the right to protect itself and that’s what we are asserting and it’s an aggressive way to do it but I just don’t think we have any other choice.

MK: Some would say it is counter-productive. Terrorism experts have said that radical Islamist organisations become more popular in the face of Western militarism because they appeal to the reservoir of moderate Muslims. You don’t agree with that?

DG: No I mean there is some argument to be made for it. But the point is we get back to this thing: If you are irritating people, why are they getting irritated so easily? You have a group of people – it might be as many as 2 million Muslims we have in Britain – you have a group of people who you’re always saying, “Oh we can’t offend them, we mustn’t do X, we mustn’t we Y, we mustn’t Z.” They’re going to be offended by another country in Europe which has a paper which published some cartoons?! If their threshold is so low we are going to keep treading on them, and if this is the case then you can’t spend the rest of your life tip-toeing around, and you shouldn’t! Do you have no self-esteem? You know.

These people and the dangers characters of Al-Qaeda and the bad guys are always going to have a reason. I don’t even think it’s worth giving them the nobility of assuming there’s any worth in it.

MK: But in terms of the war you’re laying out: fighting these Islamo-fascists, who do you think is winning at the moment?

DG: We are comprehensively, comprehensively. There are certain inexact ways you can look at that. Five years on from 9/11 there hasn’t yet been another major attack on the American homeland. I think that’s fairly amazing. Commentary ran in its October 2005 issue, a sort of forum of what various Americans think about the war. Max Boot said this: “There is no way five years ago that I would have guessed there wouldn’t have been another attack”. We know from the communications we’ve intercepted, intercepted the top al-Qaeda, we know the damage we’ve done to Al-Qaeda. We know the way in which they’ve had to hunker down and that Mr. Bin Laden is stuck to occasionally releasing rehashings of Michael Moore’s documentaries or whatever he’s doing holed up in his hole in Afghanistan he’s obviously got a Blockbuster card and been borrowing “Fahrenheit 9/11”.

Let’s not take the non-attack thing for a second because that is a hostage to fortune. Look at the engagements we have with this enemy. Not one engagement on the field of battle has been lost, not one. And the military odds against the enemy are so overwhelming that it’s not even an issue. What we’re seeing which is why a lot of people in the West are thinking that somehow we might be losing this war is: A. media bias, appalling media bias about this conflict from people who hated in the first place and will not get on the side of the American effort and will now get on the side of Iraqi freedom which I think is a disgrace. And there are really good examples of people on the left who have done it, who have done it right: the Labour trade unions: the Firebridgade Union was opposed to the war in Iraq and the war in Iraq is over and done with and they immediately get on the side of their brother fireman in the Iraq, raising money for them, being in solidarity with them. That’s what people should be doing, but so few people have done it.

If we just take this thing of the perceived failure. There’s only one previous example of this and that’s Vietnam. During the Tet offensive which was assumed to have been lost – at home we assumed it was lost – there was a kill rate of at least 50 to 1 in Americas favour. When you’re fighting at those kinds of odds and that’s the kind of odds we’re fighting at in Iraq, in Falluja and places like that – at the level of 50 insurgents to 1 Western troop. When you are fighting at those kind of odds how can you think you are losing? Unless, as a society, as a media, you are so rotten from within that you are willing to kill 50 of the enemy but not to sacrifice one of your own: that’s a postmodern problem and it’s a going to be a problem which is going to cause more and more disasters for the West if we go on like this.

MK: But if you are fighting under the rubric of the “war of terror”, you aren’t going to measure it that way. You are going to gauge it by if it is stopping terrorism or if it is making the threat of terrorism which some people people say Falluja, for example, has done. Although on the field of battle, as you say, we are winning outright, the general ideology of Wahabbi Islam is still strong…

DG: But are we going we going to be blackmailed by this? We kill them in Falluja… Again Falluja is like Jenin, you know…. You kill a vast number of terrorists and the Western press reports it simply as fatalities as if these were innocents little girls killed, you know, you know. And the same thing with the bombing on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan the other week – again, a number of innocents killed – I’d say that is what happens if you have al-Qaeda members round for tea, you know, if you are providing a safehouse you shouldn’t be safe.

But the way in which we measure this, you know, it is hard because it is predicting a non-event happening. It is predicting something not happening. In London we’ve had two attacks – the second one failed. If that starts happening more then, you know, there are other ways we will have to deal with it. But for the time being, who would have thought in 2001 when people were clearing out towers in Docklands and, you know, leaving their offices across the capital on another bomb alert, who would have thought – it’s a hostage to fortune – but that there would have been one successful attack in London?

MK: And you think that’s a direct relation to the Afghani and Iraq war?

DG: I think it’s part of the whole package. I think it’ll be, “Why are you Saudi, they want Indonesia back, they Spain back!” Are we going to give them Analuscia, are we going to give them any of Spain? I don’t think so. These are the things they are grieving about. So I think Iraq, Palestine, I think these are guys who are going to find a reason.

MK: Do you think it will ever die now? Do you think this can ever die outright?

DG: Yeah, we will. But we’re looking at, and Washington is looking at, you know, a thirty year conflict.

MK: Scary stuff.

DG: I don’t think it is scary stuff particularly. I mean no more than it should be. Look, for two generation – ours and our parents generation had the fortune of never having to fight a conscription war or anything like that. A lot of what’s happening, a lot of why people say, “Oh crumbs, this is scary,” and why they are willing to take to the streets and why they are willing to shout and attack their government, comes down to an interesting change that’s happened in the West, which is that these are people who know that they do not have a part in this conflict other than as civilians, other than as citizens. There’s never going to be a draft: Look, if it ever got to that stage in America, for instance, there would be a change and restructure in the way we are fighting this conflict. There’s not going to be a draft and so the people have an opportunity to air their feelings as they should do, and as they have a right to do. But the sense of, “Why did we go war?” or “What are we doing?” What are “we” – the public – doing? Our armed forces are doing something for which we should be profoundly grateful and causes of which we should be debating, but “we” the people aren’t and there’s a lot of talk which can be compared to – you remember before the latest election in America all these guys – particularly in Hollywood – “If Bush gets in, I’m going to move to Canada”. You know what, they’re still living in Hollywood. “If Bush gets in, it will be worse than death.” You know, they’re still alive. There’s a lot of talking up of emotions which happens when people have got too much time on their hands and not enough sense. And what we have to do at the moment – most civilians – is just to think right, to think straight, and to be on the right side, and be supportive.

MK: Do you agree with the Huntington thesis, the “Clash of civilizations”. Is that what we are in now?

DG: No, I don’t. It’s not a clash of civilizations and I don’t say that – a lot of people say that they don’t think it is because they don’t want it to be, and that’s it, they just can’t bear the idea of it. I don’t think it is a clash of civilizations but it has highlighted what I believe is a fight for the West. So we are not at war with another civilization, we are engaged in a form of something like a civil war and we have to win it to survive as a culture. So there’s a culture war going on. Mark Stein said at a conference we were both doing in New York a few months ago – in his speech he made what I regard as being a useful – although possibly offensive to some people – description of what’s going on. I agree with him that the West has got something like AIDS, pretty much – we have an incredibly weak immune system, it’s like HIV, the West has a weak immune system – we can see it because we are constantly being wooed by and attracted to, as a society, things that a nihilistic, degrading and empty, vapid. In that situation, of course, it is not the AIDS that kills you, it’s a virus that comes along, a pneumonia-type thing. The reason why some of us are very worried about this at the moment is because I believe that Islam, Islamic extremis, call it what you want, could be the pneumonia-like thing that kills off the body whole.

And it goes in very small erosions. It goes in the erosion of a state and a public who see nothing for which they will fight and nothing for which they would die and nothing for which – in that case – they are particularly willing to live. In that situation, a strong ideology, which extremist Islam is, is not only powerful but attractive to much of the Western world and that doesn’t mean necessarily that like John Bert’s son and Jack Straw’s son, are going to convert, but it means they will kowtow to it. It means like Jack Straw instead of saying, “You know what guys, if you saying you’ll behead somebody because they’ve drawn a cartoon you can f-off,” instead of that saying that they say, as he did, “You have a right of freedom of speech, but not a freedom to offend.” Bullshit! Of course you have a right to offend. If you offended me now, I wouldn’t get you arrested…

MK: Or behead me….

DG: Or behead you! Or say I’m going to blow you up, or call you a Zionist pig-dog, or, you know… If Western elites are so weak in the face of this, we are getting towards what my friend Bat Yeor, who’s latest book is Eurabia, but she’s a great scholar – Egyptian-Jew – and Dhimmitude, as she calls it. The Dhimmi is someone who is willing to live under Islam and this is what Western government – European governments – are increasingly to my mind, being willing to live under Islamic control. That don’t mean that… Look in Anderlucia the Muslim’s were in a minority but they controlled it. I’m not saying that we are suddenly going to suddenly be taken over, that there’s going to be a Caliphate run from Westminster or that there’s going to be a minaret on the top of St. Paul’s. These things happen by slow accretion and at the moment the West has a profound philosophical dilemma – it cannot find a way to deal with something that will destroy it and has made it clear that it wants to destroy it. And, you know, if we can’t deal with that and deal with it comprehensively. If we are so rational that we cannot find a rational reason not to be killed then we are I trouble.

So I believe there are two ways you can deal with this: 1. You lock yourself in an airless room and you make sure no bad things come in which is what a lot of American isolationists and other want to do, or, 2. You strengthen your immune system and that’s what we should be doing. We should be doing it not just by looking after those we owe a duty to abroad, but by looking out for ourselves and strengthening ourselves and realizing that we are not going – this generation – give up so lightly, under such little threat, what our forefathers fought for so hard. And if people are going to be kowtowed and beaten down by the threat of being blown up on a Tube once every five years, or once a year, or even once a month, if they are going to give up everything because of that then there’s nothing worth the fight.

MK: You were talking about Straw kowtowing. Would you call Blair a neoconservative in terms of his foreign policy and his geopolitical outlook? A lot of people do.

DG: Yes, he’s a perfect neocon in foreign policy. Not in domestic policy, but foreign absolutely.

MK: Why do you think there are so few neocon intellectuals in Britain? You’ve been talking about the neocon movement in Britain but I’ve never even heard of it.

DG: There’s not very many of us. Oliver Kamm…

MK: Yeah, Oliver Kamm, but he’s coming a “left-wing” perspective…

DG: I did an interview the other day with Oliver on the radio and again he said, “Unlike Douglas, I’m not a neocon.” He always stresses he’s not a neocon. But, you know…. Stephen Pollard, people like this, a few journalists.

MK: Why are there so few?

DG: Gee. First of all because there aren’t many thinkers in Britain. Genuinely there are not, I don’t just mean that as a swipe at the right or the left. I mean the right, what thinkers does the right have? Roger Scruton is one of the few conservative philosophers of recent years. Does the Conservative Party ever listen to him? No. Right-wing people tend to believe – as I believe – that sense is inbuilt, you’ve just got, you don’t need to intellectualize it, you know and so on and so forth. And there is some truth in that. The result is that conservatives tend to be not just not open to – but almost hostile to – thought about these sort of things. I think that leaves them now in a very vulnerable position because they are starting to have something which they can’t shore up. The ground has moved so far underneath them that they are getting lost.

But the left has its own crisis intellectually which is not only the things I mentioned earlier. But they are the establishment, you know – if I had been born differently and become a left-winger, and if I had all the Noam Chomsky-ite grouches with this world and if I was also willing to make stuff up like he is, then I could have got a chair at or got on at some academic institution, maybe LSE or SOAS or one of these places and done my brave seminars about how Dick Cheney was X, Y,Z and all this kind of stuff. And I could pretend I was a real rebel because I was willing to take to the streets with 2 million other people and shout nasty names about George Bush. These guys seem to have missed out of the fact that the counterculture as become the culture. The old dissidents are the people in charge. I mean, you know….

MK: They argue the other thing. The ones I’ve spoken to have said what you say but say it’s harder for left-winger. It may be a different situation in America. Although there are a to radical in universities faculties… Have you heard of Norman Finkelstein?

DG: Yes.

MK: Because of his anti-Israel…

DG: That’s what he blames it on…

MK: He was kicked out of about three universities in New York and he’s now in De Paul in Chicago.

DG: Seriously? I mean Princeton has one right-wing thinker and a couple of other visiting professors. If you go around American campuses… Israel is a different matter in some way and I don’t think Finkelstein is write, incidentally, about that – there are many reasons not to employ him! But, it is true that Israel in America is regarded in a different light to here. But, my God, the thing that they say on the campuses there about Israel, about Jews, I mean all sort of calumnies and they still, what Roger Kimble called “tenured radicals” – America is rife with these people. In Britain, comprehensively so. In Britain the think-tanks comprehensively so – the most well funded, most government used thinktanks like Demos – it’s just the same old stuff being churned out. They think they are radicals but they’re the ones in charge. The saddest, best metaphor for this is Gordon Brown – in that famous characteristically chippy thing when he came into Downing Street and when he went to the Treasury dinner and it’s always meant to be black-tie and he wore a lounge suit. But you do have to think when there are people around who are Chancellor of the Exchequer and they still they are outcasts! Who are at the top of their universities, at the top of their board and have tea with the President and Prime Minister and things and they still think they are radicals?! This is what Aryana Flush called the “phoney radicals” and we are covered with them in the Left. They run down a street with a bandana on their head pretending to feel like Che Guevara.

MK: That’s what people say about Noam Chomsky. He says he’s so far outside the mainstream and yet he’s sold 300,000 books.,,

DG: I wish that I could sell half of Noam Chomsky’s books. I wish that anyone would. I mean there is a great attraction to this. You do really well, you get all the money, and you get all the acclaim and you still get to pretend you are an outcast.

MK: In America there is a massive neocon movement, but in Britain there wasn’t much intellectual support for what Blair was doing. Do you think we are in need of a neocon movement here?

DG: Yeah, of course!

MK: But do you think we are always going to be neocon by default because our foreign policy is so similar to America?

DG: No because there is the possibility that next time round in America we will get a very anti-neocon administration – unless we get McCain or Condoleeza Rice in…

MK: Is McCain a neocon?

DG: No, but he is very sympathetic with certain areas and we have a lot of cross over – we have enough cross over. But can you imagine if the Democrats get someone like Howard Dean in next time? Or even John Kerry! I mean who could have said that we would still be doing what we are doing in Iraq and shoring up the democracy there is Kerry had got in. I don’t you could necessarily assume that.

MK: But in terms of the neocon agenda is viewed in America, Bush isn’t very popular now…

DG: Sure, but, look, I’m reconciled to the fact that neocons are never going to be popular.

MK: But you’ll be right…

DG: But we’ll be right and that’s what matters. Look, it’s very difficult at the moment anyway – the world situation is difficult. Someone was asking me the other day – a very bright guy – after the Presidents State of the Union address, “Why did he mention Iran, is there really a problem?” This is the world we are in – that the threat is not an army massing at your borders anymore. And we are going to have preventive wars, we always have had and we are going to have to alert the people to problems in advance which they are not going to understand the reasons for. And we are going to look like aggressors quite a lot of the time. If we were fighting a PR war then that would be a real problem but we’re not, we’re fighting a war. And PR is important but it’s not the main event. So, yeah, in this country the neocon is not really moving very fast – lots of people have sympathy with us – lots of people from the left and right – lots of the people I get on best on these issues are Labour Party people.

MK: Just a final question: Do you see neoconservatism as particularly “left-wing”? It seems to be a big tent in terms of who it accommodates…

DG: I think if we just stick to foreign policy it’s unclassifiable on the right/left thing.

MK: You don’t think there were any material goals for Bush and Blair in Iraq?

DG: No absolutely not.

MK: Not an iota?

DG: I can tell you absolutely not.

MK: That’s interesting because even with Andrew Roberts said “Of course it was about oil as well!”… You don’t agree with that?

DG: No I don’t. If they had just had what Afghanistan has as an industry – poppy growing – it would have happened. There is just no way with the threat we now face of the terrorists – they always say you only have to be lucky once with a WMD – and all hell with break loose in the West. Not only what happens with the first strike if they do that but the reaction of the people in the West. We have to be aware that the old reasons for conflicts like that aren’t going to be going around. One of the reasons why Blair, incidentally, didn’t necessarily get more intellectual support in this country is that just so many people didn’t get it. And because they didn’t get it of course they came up with other things – it was George Bush was going in to avenge his father, or whatever it was they came out with that week. People didn’t get it and it was sometimes hard to explain and they could have done with explaining it better…

MK: And not lie…

DG: I don’t believe there were lies…

MK: Colin Powell are the UN? And this thing that came out recently about Blair promising Bush his support before the UN had reached their decision…

DG: Well I don’t think that constitutes a lie….

MK: Well he said he was “undecided” – a white lie maybe…

DG: Yeah, I don’t think this is lies going on. My take on it – and I have been lambasted on this in the past – is that I believe that the public in the West was told too much. Now that doesn’t mean I think the public should be kept in the dark but I think, for instance, you should never have something happening like we have with Iraq where a single source intelligence was used and given to the public – I think that’s a great mistake.

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